Iron Maiden joins Ice Pilots
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Iron Maiden joins Ice Pilots
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Iron Maiden joins Ice Pilots NWT on historic northbound plane
EDMONTON - “Welcome to the Maiden flight of Ed Force Three,” beams Mikey McBryan, one of the stars of History Television’s reality show, Ice Pilots NWT.
The general manager of Buffalo Airways is standing in front of the cockpit door of a Douglas DC-3 as the vintage aircraft idles on the runway at the Edmonton Municipal Airport.
His father, Buffalo Joe, sits in the pilot’s seat, while one of Mikey’s childhood heroes is in the co-pilot’s seat: Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson, fresh off a gig at Rexall Place.
The bright-eyed British singer, who started flying in the 1990s, used to work as a commercial pilot for a small British airline and now runs his own aircraft maintenance firm, Cardiff Aviation, in Wales. For the next three hours and 20 minutes on a cloudy Saturday in July, he’ll guide the silver and green aircraft north to Hay River, NWT.
Before slipping into the cockpit, he affixes a sticker designed as a bull’s-eye, with the words Captain Dickinson and Ed Force Three, on the outside of the plane. The 53-year-old vocalist used to fly his band from gig to gig on a Boeing 757 known as Ed Force One, named after Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie. This particular DC-3 was one of the first Royal Air Force planes to drop paratroopers over Normandy on D-Day in 1944.
“It’s a classic airplane,” says Dickinson, the nephew of an RAF veteran. “I did a little bit of flying of these in the States. It’s like a vintage car — there’s pretty much nothing automatic on it, apart from the engines, which keep going, and that’s it. It’s a great airplane. It’s historic and an experience, which is rare these days.”
So is flying with a metal legend at the controls.
A producer and director of photography from Ice Pilots NWT is shooting the adventures for a future episode of the reality show. The fourth season, produced by Omni Film, airs in October. Dickinson’s DC-3 taxis down the runway at the Muni, then shudders left and right as the plane takes off. Mikey’s older brother and the family’s first Maiden fan, Rod, is one of 12 passengers in the 18-seat plane. He grins as he makes a zigzag motion with his hand. “This is going to take a couple of months to sink in,” he smiles.
A few minutes into the air, Joe leaves the cockpit, leaving the plane entirely in Dickinson’s hands. The McBryan patriarch, a paper boy for the Edmonton Journal in the late 1950s, is the founder of Buffalo Airways, which uses older planes in its fleet. He’s now a reality TV star, but he’d rather talk about crime stories or Edmonton’s history than his own fame.
“I could have (country singer) Merle Haggard in there with me, I wouldn’t know it,” says Joe, a cantankerous buffalo with the heart of a kitten.
After a quick pit stop in Hay River, where Dickinson signs autographs for a dozen or so fans in the tiny airport, the plane climbs back up for another 45-minutes to Yellowknife, headquarters of Buffalo Airways.
“This is great,” beams Dickinson, as he guides the DC-3 about 8,000 feet over blue and green blobs of water and land, reminiscent of the squished shapes in Norval Morrisseau’s paintings. “It’s a whole other world up here, isn’t it?”
Less than 12 hours earlier, Dickinson was on stage in Edmonton, singing classic Iron Maiden tunes such as Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and Aces High, a song about a war pilot: “Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.”
Mikey, Rod, and their sister Kathy, who manages Buffalo’s Hay River office, were in the crowd at Rexall Place, lapping up the metal madness. As a teen in the ’80s, Rod lived for Iron Maiden, playing their songs for Mikey in his crib and staring at a poster for Aces High, with Eddie in a Spitfire plane.
“Not a week goes by where I don’t listen to one of Iron Maiden’s albums,” says Buffalo’s director of maintenance, who also happens to own a pair of high-top shoes with the band’s zombie-like mascot emblazoned on the sides.
Those very shoes are responsible for Dickinson’s brief stint as a captain Buffalo Airways. If you watch Ice Pilots NWT, you’ll know Rod is the shy, I-don’t-really-like-to-be-on-camera type; he was even having second thoughts about his role on the TV show.
Cue the shoes. “(Rod) was getting fed up — (the cameras) are intrusive, they put all our dirty laundry outside,” says Mikey, the shameless hustler and younger brother of the McBryan family.
“(Rod) had this one dream that if Bruce Dickinson would see his shoes on TV, he’d know Buffalo Airways was a safe place for Iron Maiden and (say) ‘I’m going to check it out.’”
What Rod didn’t know was that Ice Pilots NWT ended up blurring out his Maiden footwear — for copyright reasons — but one of the show’s producers decided to get in touch with Dickinson and see if he knew about the McBryans and was interested in flying their planes. As it turned out, he did and he was — plus he happened to have a day off after his Iron Maiden gig in Edmonton, which is how he ended up on a DC-3 with the McBryans. And how Mikey convinced Rod to stay on the show.
Once in Yellowknife, Dickinson takes his first flight in a Norseman, Joe’s beloved single-engine float plane, and then chooses to pilot a DC-4, another aircraft from the 1940s.
In the latter, with pilot AJ Decoste at his side, Dickinson does a series of “touch and goes” — landing the plane before immediately taking off again. The first touch is a bit rough — a sudden shudder, accompanied by the loud squeals of tires. Mikey and Kristy Evans, an aspiring pilot from Perth, Australia, jolt in their seats and then laugh as the DC-4 takes to the air again. After the fourth and final landing, Dickinson is sweating from wrestling with the DC-4’s heavy control column — which looks a metal steering wheel with the top cut off. “Good job,” says Decoste.
Dickinson then gets off the plane — by walking backward down a series of metal stairs — where he’s greeted by Ice Pilots NWT’s producer Todd Serotiuk and cameraman Mike Rae for a quick interview. “It was a lovely beast,” says Dickinson, as he heads off for three pints — his limit — and a salmon burger at the Black Knight Pub.
The next afternoon, he arrives at the Yellowknife Airport to board a Boeing 737 to Edmonton, then Vancouver, where Iron Maiden is scheduled to play a few hours later. He’s feeling slightly stiff — the DC-4’s landings were tough on his back — but he’s exhilarated by the experience and learning about Buffalo Airways. He even thinks his company, Cardiff Aviation, might be able to do business with the McBryans in the future. Their fleet of Second World War-era planes won’t keep running forever.
“What they’re doing with keeping those airplanes going is just miraculous,” says Dickinson. “Ride ‘em cowboy.”
[email protected]
Iron Maiden joins Ice Pilots NWT on historic northbound plane
EDMONTON - “Welcome to the Maiden flight of Ed Force Three,” beams Mikey McBryan, one of the stars of History Television’s reality show, Ice Pilots NWT.
The general manager of Buffalo Airways is standing in front of the cockpit door of a Douglas DC-3 as the vintage aircraft idles on the runway at the Edmonton Municipal Airport.
His father, Buffalo Joe, sits in the pilot’s seat, while one of Mikey’s childhood heroes is in the co-pilot’s seat: Iron Maiden vocalist Bruce Dickinson, fresh off a gig at Rexall Place.
The bright-eyed British singer, who started flying in the 1990s, used to work as a commercial pilot for a small British airline and now runs his own aircraft maintenance firm, Cardiff Aviation, in Wales. For the next three hours and 20 minutes on a cloudy Saturday in July, he’ll guide the silver and green aircraft north to Hay River, NWT.
Before slipping into the cockpit, he affixes a sticker designed as a bull’s-eye, with the words Captain Dickinson and Ed Force Three, on the outside of the plane. The 53-year-old vocalist used to fly his band from gig to gig on a Boeing 757 known as Ed Force One, named after Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie. This particular DC-3 was one of the first Royal Air Force planes to drop paratroopers over Normandy on D-Day in 1944.
“It’s a classic airplane,” says Dickinson, the nephew of an RAF veteran. “I did a little bit of flying of these in the States. It’s like a vintage car — there’s pretty much nothing automatic on it, apart from the engines, which keep going, and that’s it. It’s a great airplane. It’s historic and an experience, which is rare these days.”
So is flying with a metal legend at the controls.
A producer and director of photography from Ice Pilots NWT is shooting the adventures for a future episode of the reality show. The fourth season, produced by Omni Film, airs in October. Dickinson’s DC-3 taxis down the runway at the Muni, then shudders left and right as the plane takes off. Mikey’s older brother and the family’s first Maiden fan, Rod, is one of 12 passengers in the 18-seat plane. He grins as he makes a zigzag motion with his hand. “This is going to take a couple of months to sink in,” he smiles.
A few minutes into the air, Joe leaves the cockpit, leaving the plane entirely in Dickinson’s hands. The McBryan patriarch, a paper boy for the Edmonton Journal in the late 1950s, is the founder of Buffalo Airways, which uses older planes in its fleet. He’s now a reality TV star, but he’d rather talk about crime stories or Edmonton’s history than his own fame.
“I could have (country singer) Merle Haggard in there with me, I wouldn’t know it,” says Joe, a cantankerous buffalo with the heart of a kitten.
After a quick pit stop in Hay River, where Dickinson signs autographs for a dozen or so fans in the tiny airport, the plane climbs back up for another 45-minutes to Yellowknife, headquarters of Buffalo Airways.
“This is great,” beams Dickinson, as he guides the DC-3 about 8,000 feet over blue and green blobs of water and land, reminiscent of the squished shapes in Norval Morrisseau’s paintings. “It’s a whole other world up here, isn’t it?”
Less than 12 hours earlier, Dickinson was on stage in Edmonton, singing classic Iron Maiden tunes such as Seventh Son of a Seventh Son and Aces High, a song about a war pilot: “Run, live to fly, fly to live, do or die.”
Mikey, Rod, and their sister Kathy, who manages Buffalo’s Hay River office, were in the crowd at Rexall Place, lapping up the metal madness. As a teen in the ’80s, Rod lived for Iron Maiden, playing their songs for Mikey in his crib and staring at a poster for Aces High, with Eddie in a Spitfire plane.
“Not a week goes by where I don’t listen to one of Iron Maiden’s albums,” says Buffalo’s director of maintenance, who also happens to own a pair of high-top shoes with the band’s zombie-like mascot emblazoned on the sides.
Those very shoes are responsible for Dickinson’s brief stint as a captain Buffalo Airways. If you watch Ice Pilots NWT, you’ll know Rod is the shy, I-don’t-really-like-to-be-on-camera type; he was even having second thoughts about his role on the TV show.
Cue the shoes. “(Rod) was getting fed up — (the cameras) are intrusive, they put all our dirty laundry outside,” says Mikey, the shameless hustler and younger brother of the McBryan family.
“(Rod) had this one dream that if Bruce Dickinson would see his shoes on TV, he’d know Buffalo Airways was a safe place for Iron Maiden and (say) ‘I’m going to check it out.’”
What Rod didn’t know was that Ice Pilots NWT ended up blurring out his Maiden footwear — for copyright reasons — but one of the show’s producers decided to get in touch with Dickinson and see if he knew about the McBryans and was interested in flying their planes. As it turned out, he did and he was — plus he happened to have a day off after his Iron Maiden gig in Edmonton, which is how he ended up on a DC-3 with the McBryans. And how Mikey convinced Rod to stay on the show.
Once in Yellowknife, Dickinson takes his first flight in a Norseman, Joe’s beloved single-engine float plane, and then chooses to pilot a DC-4, another aircraft from the 1940s.
In the latter, with pilot AJ Decoste at his side, Dickinson does a series of “touch and goes” — landing the plane before immediately taking off again. The first touch is a bit rough — a sudden shudder, accompanied by the loud squeals of tires. Mikey and Kristy Evans, an aspiring pilot from Perth, Australia, jolt in their seats and then laugh as the DC-4 takes to the air again. After the fourth and final landing, Dickinson is sweating from wrestling with the DC-4’s heavy control column — which looks a metal steering wheel with the top cut off. “Good job,” says Decoste.
Dickinson then gets off the plane — by walking backward down a series of metal stairs — where he’s greeted by Ice Pilots NWT’s producer Todd Serotiuk and cameraman Mike Rae for a quick interview. “It was a lovely beast,” says Dickinson, as he heads off for three pints — his limit — and a salmon burger at the Black Knight Pub.
The next afternoon, he arrives at the Yellowknife Airport to board a Boeing 737 to Edmonton, then Vancouver, where Iron Maiden is scheduled to play a few hours later. He’s feeling slightly stiff — the DC-4’s landings were tough on his back — but he’s exhilarated by the experience and learning about Buffalo Airways. He even thinks his company, Cardiff Aviation, might be able to do business with the McBryans in the future. Their fleet of Second World War-era planes won’t keep running forever.
“What they’re doing with keeping those airplanes going is just miraculous,” says Dickinson. “Ride ‘em cowboy.”
[email protected]
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